


So Far Away

by RevolutionVoltage



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, F/M, London, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 23:23:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2751002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevolutionVoltage/pseuds/RevolutionVoltage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis fought until that moment against his past.<br/>Louis has a lot of regrets and a lot of things to be sorry for.<br/>Louis has accomplished to kind of get along with his ghosts and his flaws.<br/>Not quite well, apparently.<br/>Because all it needs to break his castle of lies is a telegram from London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> The verses in the story are from the song ["So Far Away" by Avenged Sevenfold. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ry4cx6HfY)  
> Hope you like it :)

_Never feared for anything,_

_Never shamed but never free._

_A life that healed a broken heart with all that it could._

 

The railcar on which he was travelling already for a couple of hours kept jolting and creaking while running along the rail. 

The steel of the wheels was rolling in rhythm with the heartbeat of the man sitting alone in the second class compartment.  

Louis chose that empty compartment on purpose.  He had a desperate need of silence.  

That travel was communicating something to him and, even though he had already clearly received the message, he wanted to preted that he still hadn't got it. 

For that reason he had placed himself there, on the nearest seat by the window, with an elbow leant on the table and his blue gaze lost in the landscape of the English countryside.

  London. He was going to London. 

The city where dreams came true.  That mixture of colours that he dreamt so passionately when he was younger.  The wrinkles that he could glimpse in the reflection of the window forced him to sigh, mentally going back to the past one more time and inevitably to why he was on that train.

  Louis had lived his life without the fear of what could be extremely important, just the necessary.   He had never had to feel ashamed for what he was or for what he seemed to be, but at the great cost of pure and magical freedom. He had paid every single day of his life and destiny had been a dishonest and mean usurer. He had tried to heal his heart, to cicatrize it, but with no results. He kept paying with blood and fresh flesh, directly stripped off from his own limbs.  All for that reassuring lie, for that horrendously real recital.

 And maybe now, recalling those green eyes, he is figuring out that the price to pay has been excessively high.  

 

_Lived a life so endlessly,_

_Saw beyond what others see._

_I tried to heal your broken heart with all that I could._

_Will you stay? Will you stay away forever?_

He had met Harry on May of 1936, when he was 19. 

He entered his life in a snarl of curls and sugar-testing kisses.  Spring that year was at its best, but the only flower that Louis saw blowing was the one of their love. 

Harry was sweet, caring and, despite being younger, definitely more mature and braver than him. He had moved with his family to Holmes Chapel, a small town near Louis' Doncaster, but he totally preferred going to work to the city.  «I'll get mad if I'd have to live here in this pit for ever. City is the future and London is my future.» he used to say. And Louis wouldn't take him seriously, he wouldn't listen to him, the calm country to which he was accustomed had spoilt him. He would shut him up with a little kiss and everything would return to normal. 

But they were young at that time and everything they cared was living.  They were young and they loved each other of a true and pure love.  That love that cuts you to the core, delicate and exciting at the same time.

  The time and the whole world seemed limitless to their eyes and they were sure that what tied them together would have survived for ever, by keeping in sync the beats of their hearts. 

Their light souls could see things that were forbidden to the others, visit unexplored lands, by just squeezing each other after making love in a country farmhouse, far away from the pithy eyes of Doncaster.

 Until some news about what was happening in countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain began to pass across the Channel; and if already before their relation wasn't well seen, now they couldn't afford the mistake to show through something.  The ideals of fanatics like Hitler and Mussolini was going to millions of people's heads even in the calm land of Great Britain. Their families supported them in every way they could, they were just two little boys after all, but unfortunately this wasn't enough.  Some years later, in 1940, Harry found himself persisting in running away to London.  «Cities are safer for the people like us, Louis.»

But Louis was too scared of the situation for not reacting controlled by the panic. 

 

And now, while the tears were steaming up his sight, already damaged by the old age, and with the calloused hands shaking on the armrests of the seat, Louis would like to say that he had tried and fight. 

He would like to say with all his heart «I didn't give in. I loved Harry and for him, for us, I've given up on everything.»

 He would with body and soul. But he can't.  The wedding ring on his finger and a telegram from London in his pocket, prove this.    

 

_How do I live without the one I love?_

_Time still turns the pages of the book it has burned_

_Place and time always on my mind._

_I have so much to say but you’re so far away._

 

His breath was dying in his throat while he was browsing with his glassy look that piece of paper for the third time.

 Eleanor, his wife, had given it to him as he returned home. 

He had gone to buy a couple of ready-to-eat foods packages, just to have something to survive with in the following weeks.   He took off his jacket, scarf and hat and he had headed at slow pace towards the kitchen to put the purchases away in the counter.   «Love, this has just arrived for you. », Eleanor said to him coming near him and handing to him a yellow faded envelope. 

Louis hated how she, after more than forty years together, still called him “Love”.   However, he smiled at her, hurrying up to open it. After putting on his glasses, he found himself wishing he had never wanted to open it.

 His legs gave out and he decently managed to disguise it, by grumbling something about arthritis and leaning heavenly on the high stool right behind him.  

She must have understood something because she had left the room immediately, leaving Louis alone and upset.   He knew that this would have happened someday.  He knew that the ghost would have returned arrogantly in his life to cash in the final rate; but he was living his last years hoping to leave this world before that cloud of memories and regrets would have found him.  He had hoped in vain and that night he cried all his tears, looking for unrecoverable warmth, lost among the winter sheets and holding tight that news:   _Harry was dead._   

The old age and the tiredness made him slip away.  Probably with insolence and probably Harry didn't even utter a word.  He had smiled, with his red lips, and he had received his end with an incredible serenity because he had nothing to regret.  Nothing to be ashamed for, nothing to sorry for.  That's how Louis imagined Harry.  In his mind Harry was always that beautiful curly boy, with those green emerald eyes, that used to hold his hand when nobody was watching.   

But that night Louis had to deal with the effect that time has on people.  That mocking time was showing to him the pages of a book that Louis had burnt.  No, he wasn't able to see things in this way, for once he didn't want to see with the eyes of the victim.  He had ruined everything.

 Therefore Louis limited himself to recall in mind places, moments, perfumes, colours and emotions that they had shared. One by one.

 Useless to say that he decided to attend the funeral – the telegram stated that one of the last Harry's wills was precisely to have Louis at his side – and he would have left in a few days.   While the white and wet sheets in his queen sized bed were reflecting the moonlight coming from the windows, Louis was thinking of Harry and everything that he should have said to him when he had the chance.  

Everything that he should have said to him when they weren't so far away.  

 

_Plans of what our futures hold,_

_Foolish lies of growing old._

_It seems we’re so invincible,_

_The truth is so cold._

 

The following morning when Louis got up he realised how useless it was to sleep on something.  

He still wasn't over it. Both the lump in his throat and the load in his stomach were still there, sadistically accompanied by two swollen red eyes.  But above all, Harry's name was still impressed in every fibre of his body.

  Louis came down the stairs to go to the kitchen and found a ready cup of hot tea and his wife who was waiting for him sitting still, with her arms crossed on the lap and a worried gaze. Eleanor saw him pass the threshold and she slowly got up to reach him for a hug, then putting a soft kiss on his cheek.   Her sweet fruity perfume calmed him, but Louis couldn't avoid asking himself if that perfume was the one he always wanted to wear for all his life.

He didn't miss to ask himself, like every single day of his pathetic existence, if his choice had been the right one.  

«Was he a dear friend?»   His wife's voice brought him back down to earth.

 Louis swallowed with difficulty, trying to look calm, before answering.   «He was the friend with whom you do millions of plans that you'll never realise. But you know...At the moment everything looks tangible.», Louis dared to move his eyes to the woman's ones in front of him, to read in them understanding and pure affection. 

Even though he had mistaken not to choose the life with Harry, he had won in finding Eleanor and not a tramp that isn’t worth a thing. This made him smile a bit.  Anyway, he broke the visual contact, scared that she could understand the lie in his last words. Then he thought that she had never got all his lies in the _I love you’s_ and in every small gesture that he used to do for her acting as attentive husband, and he convinced himself that he could have a lucky escape once again.

  He let himself fall on the stool and he grabbed the cup of steaming tea.  His brain works autonomously and he didn't notice that Eleanor was going to the sitting room, too busy in recalling and regretting every single moment with the curly boy.  A couple of minutes and Louis was already sobbing, again.  

Finally he wanted to recognise the biggest mistake of his life; the only thing was, as unfortunately his eyes, swollen of tears, knew that so well, it was too late.  Louis couldn't fix it; he couldn't let Harry know how much he always loved him.  He couldn't do anything to calm himself when he thought that he could have spent all his existence in holding tight his true love.  But he showed himself without the guts, a coward.  He let Harry go to London, choosing a miserable but safe lie to the real life, maybe dangerous, but a life that was worth living.

And now he could just cry, regretting for ever and sipping devastated and mournful his cup of tea.  

 

_A final song, a last request,_

_A perfect chapter laid to rest._

_Now and then I try to find a place in my mind,_

_Where you can stay, you can stay awake forever._

 

 He had to hurry up or he would have lost the train.  Two little boys overtook him running, heading towards one of the last carriages and this, like every little thing for 50 years now, makes him remember of Harry: when they used to run in the fields towards the farmhouses to take refuge from the rain always so susceptible in England, or when they didn't give a damn and they kissed for hours, rain-soaked, lying on a field of golden wheat ears. 

He stopped for a moment, catching his breath and his wrinkled and chapped fingers ran with an accidentally movement to the telegram which Eleanor carefully had put back in his coat. 

_«I guess, I'll go away for a couple of days, not more. »_

_«Are you sure you'll be able to head out on a journey all the way to London? », she had asked, once on the threshold, ready for goodbye._

_«Yes, dear. », Louis had closed his eyes, kissing her forehead, and he had headed towards the taxi ready to take him to the Doncaster railway station._

 

The man smiled with a vacant stare, pulling out the telegram and reading it again for the umpteenth and painful time.

 

  On the date 13th Nov Harry Styles has deceased. Stop. 

Please attend the funeral - date 17th Nov. Stop.

 Expressed by the defunct’s will. Stop. 

Address and time: St.Paul Cathedral h 3.00 p.m.  

Stop.  

 

Even though that piece of paper had brought the worst news of his life, it had also given to him the happiest gift: after 50 years with no kind of contact, Harry still remembers him.  

He remembers of him so much that he had wished to have him at his funeral.  

Sure, Louis would have preferred reconciliation full of kisses and sorry’s, livelier, but at this moment his heart beat to a 'Harry-Harry-Harry' rhythm and nothing could matters.  

He hurried the last steps and, after being helped by a young man, he got on the train, directed to his Harry, with the weirdest feeling that he has ever felt the honour to feel. He chose the sit next to the window of the only completely empty compartment and he seated. 

Louis knew it was the end. 

That was his last performance, his last song on a stage too tight and slippery to host his soul and his freedom too.  It was the last time the audience would have asked him a second performance and Louis had just decided that at 76 years old, he could by now declare himself tired to play.

 The journey he was undertaking was the last chapter of his book, the last and perfect one. 

The one where every piece that during the reading seemed desperately out of place falls into places. 

The last chapter: destined to survive in the story, destined to disappoint or to excite. 

Louis had already disappointed too much, himself first, in the novel of his life.

 It was time to excite.  It was time to make the character of Harry revive and surprise the reader with a plot-twist, trying to treasure memories in which the man that he had loved could be awake, for ever.

 He closed his eyes, leaning better on the seatback.

 The train moved his first steps towards London.   

 

_Sleep tight, I'm not afraid_

_The ones that we love are here with me._

_Lay away a place for me,_

_Cause as soon as I'm done, I'll be on my way_

_To live eternally._

 

Louis cursed himself for not having checked the weather before deciding what to take to London with him. The coat he was wearing was a bit too light and constrained him to squeeze in the collars, embracing himself unstable in the freezing wind.   He was in front of St. Paul's and ten minutes were missing to 3 o' clock.  

He decided he wouldn't wait out there. He took his heart in his hand and swallowing nervous, he walked in the church.  He didn't think that, at his age, he could have felt again feelings such as astonishment, anxiety, insecurity or discomfort.  Still, a mix of all this tightened his chest, like the claws of an eagle around the body of an undefended prey.  His breath accelerated rapidly, creating little clouds of condensation in the air, while he was pulling out his gloves and he put them away in his pocket, taking uncertain steps along the aisle of the cathedral.  

His gaze scanned every image that he could adsorb, from the high steeples to the impressive Gothic mosaics, until he directed his glance to a small group of busy people near the first pews. He moved more quickly, embarrassed and overpowered by an inexplicable feeling towards them. 

At every constriction that his muscles made to make him approach those people – to the life that Harry would have had after him – a new doubt, a new question crossed his mind.   What if they wouldn't recognize him because Harry had never spoken about him?  What if Harry would have spoken about him just for defaming him? What if those people would have hated him for what he had done to their – to his – Harry?  

Louis surely hated himself.

 Was he ready to see him again?  Was he ready to make him enter again in his life?  Did Harry forgive him?  Did Louis forgive himself?  Was Louis able to bear Harry's return in his life?  What is going to happen now?  

Louis was still adsorbed by these questions when a woman, of quite advanced age too, approached him and put a hand on his forearm.

 «Louis?» 

The man, surprised and caught at a disadvantage, turned around.

 «I'm Erika, a friend of Harry. I knew you wouldn't let him alone.», said simply, slightly tilting the head to the right. Her eyes were shining with joy.

 Louis couldn't breathe.  «At least, not another time.», continued the woman, tightening imperceptibly her grip on Louis' forearm looking at him with compassion, softened by a blurry sense of sympathy.

  Louis opened up his mouth to talk, to present himself, to excuse himself, to say that he loved him more than anything else in the world.  But nothing came out and his lips closed again, disappointed.  

«Come, I have something for you.», and she pushed him gently towards a lateral door of the luxurious altar that should had been the vestry.  

When the awareness of being really there, from few breaths to know everything hit him, Louis spoke.  

«Was he happy?»  His voice came out raspy, mournful, burning his larynx wall like acid.  

The woman didn't even consider him worthy of a glance while she was expressing her answer.  «Happy, but torn. He just adapted himself to stay without you for the rest of his life.», she muttered something to her handbag and continued, «But he did find people who had been able to bandage his wounds, you know, Louis? So yes, yes, he was a happy man.»  

The idea of somebody else who could have make him feel better his Harry while he had been so coward to abandon him for a lie, made him feel consumed with rage. 

It was a bitter thought, so unbearable that made him want to run away. Once again. 

Far away from everything and pretend that telegram had never reached for him.  But his feet didn't move a millimetre.  

«However, it's remarkable.», the woman affirmed, this time turning to him and gently smiling before returning to her handbag, now half emptied. 

«What?», Louis really couldn't say more than this, even though billions of questions, ideas, fact and memories were pounding in his head.  

«You come here, after abandoning him years ago, and the first, and only so far, thing that you ask is _'Was he happy?'_. You should have loved him really much.» 

She shook the bag and a white envelope came outside, flying destructively on the floor.

 With a groan of pain she bended down and she picked it up, dusting it with his black blouse.

 Louis knew what to say, he just didn't know how.  

«Here. This is for you. It's the only thing he wanted you have.», she said handing him the envelope.

 Louis grabbed it, his hands were shaking inevitably. 

Her fingers, long and warm, seized him by the wrists keeping them still and calming his heartbeat a little. 

She smiled at him, baring her white teeth, slightly ruined by the old age.  

A sincere smile, however, one of the best Louis had ever seen in his life.  Then she turned, heading towards the door.  

«I've never stopped loving him. Never.»  Louis' voice was almost a whisper, but the woman's ears heard that message. 

She turned slowly again, retracing back her steps and she hugged the man.

 She hugged him, holding him tight and Louis just felt like crying.  That hug smacked of forgiveness.  And that woman was exactly as it would be him if he hadn't given up on his love. 

She was hugging him right as Harry would have hugged him, all understanding and whispers. 

This was something that his heart couldn't bear, couldn't stand.  

«I loved him. I loved him. I still love him.»  This was his monotonous refrain.

 Louis couldn't help but stop, his hands still grasped around the envelope that he didn't have the courage to open.  «I'm a coward. I lost him. I loved him.»

 She didn't say a thing, she just holds him tighter to her chest, lulling and consoling him.

 She must have been a very good friend, he thought.  «Now, let's go, the function is about to start.», she murmured to his ear, taking him by the hand and driving him outside, towards the first pews facing the dark mahogany coffin. 

Louis could barely see it, but he was aware that the woman beside him was strangely smiling and this calmed him down. 

Yes, now Harry could leave him and go to sleep for ever. 

Louis wasn't scared of loneliness or darkness anymore.  He was surrounded by people who were part of Harry's life, people that should have shared the acquaintance. And they have forgiven him.

 Yet, this wasn't enough. 

Louis wanted Harry's forgiveness in person.  But his love was in that damned wooden box and Louis would never heard the words _‘I love you’_ from his mouth never again. 

The only thing that he was asking to him was to reserve a place for him.  A little place on his side and in his heart.  

Because if Louis had given up loving in his life, he would never have been that stupid to do that mistake a second time in the afterlife. 

Obviously if Harry would give him another chance.

 Louis would take it immediately and he would kiss him for so long that it'd definitely take the air out of their lungs and then, after breathing again, he would just do it again, because he had to get back somehow the time lost because of his cowardice and stupidity. 

He found himself smiling at this idea, while he was sitting down at the extremity of the third pew.

 Louis was on his way, on his way to reach for Harry and for living his love at last and for ever.

 He reached to make himself comfortable and stare the red and black drapery on the coffin, vitreous gaze, squeezing in the most convulsive way between the fingers the envelope which contains his hopes.   

 

_I love you, you were ready._

_The pain is strong enough despite!_

_But I'll see you, when He lets me._

_Your pain is gone, your hands are tied._

_So far away._

_And I need you to know…I love you._

 

 He had been waiting in front of the florist shop window more than half an hour, the old woman inside the shop was looking at him sideways for ten minutes.

 He couldn't decide but eventually he opted for a sunflower as a symbol that despite had been apart, Harry was always his central gravity and every move Louis had ever done in his life was linked to his addiction to Harry somehow, to his Sun. 

After the function, the coffin had been moved with the funeral procession following, Louis held off of it, waiting patiently for the moment in which he would have been alone with Harry. Finally, after an hour, everyone went away, Erika included – she had said goodbye to him with a significant gaze and «Good luck, Louis».

 Now the man was squeezing the sunflower's stem, the sealed envelope burning in his pocket, walking towards the grey grave just placed.  The more he came closer the more his legs were giving out, just as he was in front of Harry alive, breathing and handsome as only he could be. 

He arrived near the cold granite; he knelt slowly to the ground – damned arthritis - and placed the flower at the bottom of the gravestone. 

He remained still for a moment, in adsorbed and guilty contemplation of those green eyes he felt head over heels for, that in picture they definitely didn’t do justice to their natural sparkle. Despite that terrible cliché, he found himself sighing with swollen eyes while his fingers touched lightly one by one the letters forming the name that he had so loved whispering, groaning, screaming, asking, hiding and tasting. 

Then, with a jerk, he injected the hands in his pocket and pulled out the letter.

 Turned it around in his fingers, then he spoke, looking directly at the smiling picture of the man on the gravestone.  

«I don't want to know what it's written here. Not before having told you everything.»

He took a deep breath.

«I love you. I love you and I have always loved you for every single day of my bloody life. You have always been the only thing I've never been able to get out of my mind.  I breathed every second of my existence in the hope of seeing you, kissing you, hugging you. And I don't know what it's been. I don't know if it had been because of my fear for what was happening or simply I was too coward and stupid to deserve you, I just know that I abandoned you, I let you go away from me and these are the only things that I regret with all my heart. These are the only things that, still now, keep me up at night, asking to myself _' What if I..?’_ »  

He stopped for a moment to collect some ideas, then wiped the cold tears, and went on.  

«I really hope your life has been the happiest ever ‘cause you deserved it and, Hazza, forgive me. Forgive me, please. I'll never be able to forgive me. So, please, forgive me. I love you, Harry.»  

Louis was sobbing and was feeling completely broken. 

Pouring everything out loud had killed him but had also made him born again.  For the first time since when he used to kiss Harry under the pouring rain in the wheat field, Louis was sincere. Sincere and happy.

He tried to compose himself, the gaze still lost in the green eyes of the other and the hands still convulsively grabbed around that piece of paper that the curly boy had left to him.  

He decided that it was time now to open the letter, to read what he had chosen to tell him.  Anything was written there, Louis knew that he would have accepted it without blinking. 

He had left him and really, he couldn't find excuses. 

He deserved every single word that his eyes could find on that paper.  

With shaking hands and heart in turmoil, he tore the paper up and pulled out a white paper.  

The writing was light inked in blue, born from a round and masculine handwriting.   

_“I have forgiven you right when you left me.  You too, Louis._

_I love you, too.”_

  Now Louis was crying.  Warm tears were streaming down his cheeks paralysed by the cold and the emotions.  

His knees gave out and the letter fell out of his hands, going to rest on the sunflower, at the bottom of the stone.  

Harry had forgiven him. And it was all Louis needed to know to die in peace eventually. 

It was just as Louis had understood in that moment.  His life wouldn't end.  It couldn't have ended until he wouldn't have the certainty that his love have forgiven him. 

No more regrets, no more second thoughts.  He could live serene; he could come back to him.

  He smiled, moved.

  «It hurts, Hazza. It excessively hurts but I promise that I keep holding on. ‘Cause, when He will allow me, I'll see you again. I'll come back to you, with you, where I've always been at home. Where I've always been happy. The only one where I've been Louis.»  

He looked at the sky, putting his light blue irises, old and tired, in that gloomy sky which was observing him silently and he laughed, happy.  

«Now you're alone, just as you've been for all my life. But I want you to know that I love you. Wait for me, Harry. I know there's nothing else you can do, that your hands are tied. Wait for me. We have the infinity to live.»

  He stood up with effort, still shaking, his tired heart was still beating tireless, and he walked out the graveyard, closing everything.  

A new energy was pushing him towards, step by step: the hope that, once done with all the pain of his life on Earth, victim of a wrong choice, he would have his love back again.  

And he would have him for ever.


End file.
